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It’s waking up on Monday morning with no complaints.
It’s knowing you always deserve to laugh.
It’s doing what feels right no matter what. Doing what you want regardless of how stupid you look.
Its following your heart and not worrying about the mistakes you made.
Admitting that you’ve changed your mind.
It’s about being yourself, because no one can tell you you’re doing it wrong.

These are uncertain times in a city like London, but what times are certain, anywhere?

Usually, the fascinating things in life are volatile. In your life, and hopefully mine to some. And I’d endeavour to say that the best things that can happen to us are typically the result of something else completely out of our control. …Whatever lies down the beaten track.
I don’t know about anyone else playing at home, but to me that’s equal parts mysterious, liberating and daunting.

There are loads of challenges ahead, I know. I’ve always known. But, I will promise myself if I keep focused and use the aptitude gained from my passion, everything will eventually be ok. Sounds just about right doesn’t it?
It’s kind of like my own slice of mental paradise, hidden away from the insanity of the rat race.

But let me roll off into a tangent for just a moment.
Because ultimately, my time in London is not a time for rose-tinted glasses. There are real obstacles that have to be overcome sooner rather than later. …I am on a countdown here. There’s a ton of annoying, obtuse stuff that unfortunately was inevitable with the idea of moving to London. That’s ok, I’m happy to try to overcome it, but for now, at the risk of sounding ‘oh so’ cliché, I have to play the rough hand that I’ve been dealt.

To continue my lazy metaphor, I should lay all my cards on the table and tear off my band-aids. I’m here and looking for a comfy chair in design. And this economy sucks. (I know, my timing is sensational).
The right job may not come quickly. Not many people are hiring. I may not even get a job; a degree, talent and experience don’t equal a shiny new job when 300 others are THE competition. Welcome to the wide world of failure.

One of the most important bits of knowledge I have developed from my learning so far is that failure cannot be driven out of life, especially in anyone’s creative life. Failure is really ok. In fact, I’ve come to expect it. Failure is how we learn to get better. And if anyone is not in this profession to learn and to get better, then go home. There are too many designers here as it is.

More than anything for myself, the best boat that will weather this big London storm is passion. Passion trumps all other traits mentioned above, because I say so. And I’m writing this.
Why you ask? Because it has resilience and determination. Being passionate, I will not turn my back on the thing that I love and dream about. I will make it through. Regardless of what loans I owe to who, how much cash is in my pockets or even what I eat for dinner every night.
I am possibly part of a small group of people left on this planet that not only remembers how to make stuff, but actually considers it a part of my well-being and my life. Yeah, on occasion I eat, sleep and breathe design. If your part of this group, you’ll get it.

Designers are ‘idea people’, but our effectiveness is based on the making of those ideas and getting them (or ourselves) out there. There is no right or wrong time to combat any of this economy.
Passion like the person you are, needs to breathe. Its time to roll up my sleeves and get to work. …Wherever I land next.

They say a glass seen as half full exemplifies an optimistic view of things. Life, travel, money or what ever you want to pour from.
…Yet a glass viewed as half empty is a reflection of a pessimistic perspective.
I do often see things half empty here, especially in such a foreign environment with unfamiliar surroundings or difficult situations, but I guess that’s normal – anywhere.

Things can seem so much further out of reach and so much more is at stake though when there is nothing familiar to keep you moving along for the rest of your journey. It can all feel completely half empty when you’re alone to start something new.

But yesterday is now a past-tense representation of my life, I have learnt a great deal in moving forward and each day naturally grows upwards and stronger, shaping my own reality as it seems.

Today my glass is half full. and I won’t let my spirit be broken anymore.
My enlightened perspective now is that I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
Perspective is my new fuel for originality. We look at the same world, and see something else, our own worlds blossoming into a new life as a result of what we see, what we do and what we are looking for.
Here comes tomorrow.

The Better Project is something I stumbled across neatly whilst surfing my vast array of blog listings and links and clicks or what have you. But this is one neat little project worth another mention.

The Better Project harnesses a sort of collaborative power of teh interwebs to help make anything better. Litterally anything.

It takes just a few minutes to set up your own project for instance, invite others and start sharing and discussing ideas around topics and interests you care about and want to see change towards. ..Such as coffee…Becuase I had a *nasty* one on the weekend.

But all bad coffees aside, thinking about the way this works though, it could become a good platform for companies and programs or places to generate feedback and actually listen to the audience at home…or for something/someone new to fill a space where so much is collectively missing.

Every year, right around this time, I develop a warm feeling of excited anticipation.

I wake up in the morning and the air smells like possibility,
the sun on my face feels like a rhythm that my life is about to change.
As I wait for the change to start happening,
I always find myself dreaming of what it might be:
a new job, a house change,
winning the big bucks possibly?
Usually, the change is almost always more like realising that it’s time to do the laundry and suddenly hitting the jackpot with clothes I’d forgotten about completely. Regardless, this feeling always surprises me, and I treasure it each year, whatever form it choses to take.

It’s sort of like a reminder that I am not yet at all jaded by life,
that I still believe in great impossible things such as moving my whole entire self to a different country or becoming something I’m not yet.
I cling to this part of myself like a child who knows the Tooth Fairy isn’t *really* real, and yet refuses to admit it.
Perhaps this is my version of refusing to achieve maturity.

But hey, if that feeling of pure joy and eagerness disappears, all that’s left of autumn is the air getting cooler and the grey mornings getting darker, then how boring is that?

I don’t think I will ever quite stop dreaming about the changes, the could be’s and the will be’s… which is why this time the impossible rhythm is really quite something.
It might be enough to take my heart and soul, my ideas and my life to another level above laundry baskets and hidden socks to an unknown mystery.
But I wont know till I get there.

To believe in an escape from the quotidian aspect of life is probably one of our greatest, deep-seated motivators.
Though we might love our friends, family and lives in general, our active minds constantly entertain a place, a future far removed from the familiar.

The escape plan can take many forms; a career breakthrough, a change of country or scenery …sometimes both or a loving relationship even.
The only way we can march to the beat of the humdrum, and chew the gristle of daily life is to believe that something more amazing, more defined, might just be around the corner.

Rummaging through a few old photo albums over the Christmas period has got me thinking about where we have come from and how people progressively change in a expedient attempt to search for their true calling, their own choices or dreams and how change itself effects not only an individual, but the entire outlook on your life and where you have come from.

I love that my parents can still look at these photos, laugh and joke about it all together, even though things have changed. Completely.

I spent a small amount of time in my hometown over these holidays and things felt somewhat different.
While it was still the place I grew up, where we would walk down to the Muarry river banks and swim through the reeds or the place where we would spend countless nights laughing in each others backyards, plotting and scheming about random nefarious things;
it – or ‘I’ for that matter, had changed.

I looked around at a familiar setting that felt somewhat detached and hazy to the person I was and had become. I had definitely outgrown the shoes that fit over the years, into something bigger and much more comfortable.
Even though this was a place where I had come from, it’s not me, nor does it define the person I was or the person that I am becoming today.

Looking back at these images makes me smile, makes my family laugh and the stories all start to roll in about ‘the times when’ and the ‘remember how we used to’.
These images are simply fragments of who we were – the past – of a life in making. Yet will continue to be an adventurous story that each of us could never forget.